SIO294: The Hannah-Jones Tenure Denial is Worse Than You Think

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 294. I'm Thomas. With me, as always, is Dr. Lindsey Osterman. How you doing, Lindsey?

0:00:37 Lindsey: Fantastic. How are you?

0:00:38 Thomas: Doing well. I think this entire show is actually just trying to get you mad, it We

0:00:44 Lindsey: Yeah, it's trying. We'll see if it succeeds.

0:00:47 Thomas: I mean, I guess in the beginning I tricked you, because we were like, hey, come talk about EvoPsych, you know? Just some stuff that you might enjoy. And now it's like, Lindsey, you should be mad about this! Yes. Tell us how mad we should be about this thing. You know, it seems to be the theme now.

0:00:58 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, I think I think I've earned a nice episode about like puppies or I don't know incest porn something. Um, ew.

0:01:08 Thomas: Puppy incest. I mean if there is, oh, that's your line. That's your, that was too far.

0:01:16 Lindsey: Yeah that's my line.

0:01:19 Thomas: Incest fine. Puppies fine. Puppy incest too far for you. Okay. Okay, I see. This is a weird thing. All right. No, if there are any puppy related EvoCite content, I think the audience would be happy with that. So if You want a nice, pleasant episode, find that and we can do it. But not today. Today, we've got something very frustrating to talk about. It's the Nicole Hannah-Jones controversy. Maybe we'll try our normal format where I try to summarize something and you tell me if I got it right and then teach us all what went on. I'm just really really excited to get your actual perspective on this because it is about tenure. It is about university-related stuff. You are a tenured professor, are you not?

0:01:34 Lindsey: Yeah okay.

0:02:04 Thomas: So you know something about that.

0:02:04 Lindsey: I am. I do.

0:02:08 Thomas: That's cool. I think that will be very valuable because, well, let's get into it. So Nicole Hannah-Jones is really great. Not going to try to pretend I don't have any bias in this. She's a fantastic investigative journalist who She was responsible for developing the 1619 project. She wrote parts of it. And also, obviously, there are a lot of people involved in it. It was a fantastic thing. By the way, the 1619 project was really cool. I was just reading refreshing on it because I can't believe it's already been like a couple years since 1619. I think it's been like two years. No, since the actual project. It was like people were lined around the block to get like the physical copies of this. And people were saying like not since the Obama of or election winning York Times were people that interested in like a physical copy of the Times, especially in 2019 when this came out.

0:02:08 Lindsey: It's

0:02:59 Thomas: So that's super cool. It's successful thing. It won a Pulitzer for commentary. She won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, so I guess you might say a very qualified, skilled, compelling journalist, would you say? Yeah, something like that. A real get for anyone who would want to hire her for anything journalism related.

0:03:13 Lindsey: Would say that yeah

0:03:20 Thomas: So there are things to talk about around the 1619 Project we will get to. I think I'll pause that there and just say She was offered the knight position at some sort of yet. Now, this is where you're going to have to help me out with the like university ease of what what this is. Some sort of position that the two people previous had been given tenure. No problem.

0:03:20 Lindsey: Absolutely yeah mm-hmm

0:03:43 Thomas: But all of a sudden, Nicole Hannah-Jones. Jones. Was denied tenure. Now there's we're going to have to again, you'll tell us specifically what happened because I've seen some some mixed things.

0:03:52 Lindsey: That's excruciating detail I'm gonna tell you what happened

0:03:54 Thomas: Yes. And well, then why don't we get to that? She was denied ten year. And the thing that I had tweeted about last week or whatever, when this happened was how, you know, cause I got into some arguments with some people. Um, it's not as though this was made by people who should have been making this decision. It sounds like the people who should've been making this decision were like, "Yep. Great idea. Tenure, bam." And then a board of trustees, which, which, was comprised of, or, uh... I've always used use that wrong, comprises, is that how you're supposed to use, the board comprises uh, no, that sounds so wrong, but it's probably right.

0:03:55 Lindsey: Yeah that's, Right. Mm-hm.

0:04:25 Lindsey: Yeah. But it's

0:04:28 Thomas: Huh? Okay. It comprises 11, 10 old white man, one student body president who was currently at that time a young white man. By the way, the next student body present who was about to be sworn in, I can't believe I know this but I was looking into all this, uh, is a black guy, so that's cool, at least that, at least there, there will be a tiny bit of diversity in that respect. But at the time of the decision, 10 old white men, one young white man, one old white woman, and one black woman. That was the board of 13 people who made this decision. And I tweeted about it because I was like, wow, it looks like a woke mob is not in charge of universities. It looks like, as always, who holds the real power, apparently, the veto power, is a panel of pretty much 90 plus percent white people.

0:04:28 Lindsey: Right. Yeah, yeah.

0:05:14 Thomas: And so, yeah, I was pretty outraged about it. And there's enough going on that I thought, let's get Lindsay's take on it. So how? What do you think? Take us on a journey.

0:05:26 Lindsey: No, the broad strokes of that are, are exactly right, um, it's, this is, this is a much more disturbing decision that might even be obvious from the reporting about it, though, um, so when I was like reading the headlines, right, they were, they were casting it as, as, you know, she didn't get tenure, she was denied tenure, right? And so the association for that, with that, for me is like, oh okay, so she, she already had this professorship position. She went up for tenure.

0:05:51 Thomas: Right.

0:05:51 Lindsey: She was denied it. Review process is not necessarily straightforward and objective, right? So there could have been some ambiguity here, right.

0:05:58 Thomas: Yeah. How does that work normally? I mean, is it like parole where you're like, okay, next year, I guess I'll try to get released. Or do you apply for tenure? When you're trying to how does it work right

0:06:11 Lindsey: Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's good place to start. So for a normal position, and this was not a normal position, right, but for a position, you are hired as an assistant professor. And then after you've been at the university, typically for six years, you have the opportunity to go up for tenure and promotion to associate professor. And so in that sixth year, you prepare this like big dossier, or you provide all the evidence that you have met the requirements for tenure. And it's reviewed by, exactly.

0:06:37 Thomas: You show them all your podcast guest spots

0:06:41 Lindsey: But it's review by a bunch of folks. And we're going to get into that process in detail in a minute. And then, you know, you're either approved for tenure, and you get, a so you usually that comes along with a promotion to associate professor, even though those are two different things, um, or you're fired. Yeah. That's right, that's it's not it's

0:06:56 Thomas: Whoa, or you're fired second place this is a real uh Glenn Gary Glenn Ross situation, there is, is second place a set of steak knives, yeah? No.

0:06:59 Lindsey: Yeah uh Yeah, yeah. That's right, no.

0:07:08 Thomas: It's well in that one it's third place is you're hired, second place says steak knives, first place I can't remember, it's money, I don't, I don't know. Car.

0:07:08 Lindsey: That's right it's excellent, yeah. Yeah it's It's, it's not like that at absolutely every university, so the details of this vary. But at a lot of places, including where I'm at, it's like, yeah, you either get tenured or you don't get to work at that university anymore

0:07:19 Thomas: Okay. Firing squad. Yeah. What the heck? That is an interesting system. Side note. I And see already a ton. This always happens. Whenever there' a controversy like this, there' S a bunch of other things brought into it to try to distract. Well, well, actually, tenure is a tough thing. Nobody gets tenure. And also, we should be really thinking about all the assistant professors out there who don't get tenure and don't even get the steak knives. And it's like, okay, but let's focus on the details of this particular thing, Because as you say, this isn't a normal position.

0:07:26 Lindsey: Yeah uh No, no, it's, it's not, um, I don't know, I, I have a lot to say about, about those folks, right? And that, that criticism, so, um, but yeah, so let me, let me talk a little bit about what this position is, so this, this Night chair in race and investigative, investigative journalism, um, it has historically been a, a tenured position, meaning, it's not the same as saying the last two people who got the position also were granted tenure. It's that the position that was being advertised was for a full tenured professorship upon appointment, right? That's historically how the position has been, right. So this is what is called like an endowed chair position.

0:08:01 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:08:34 Thomas: Yeah, so it's funded by the Knight Foundation or whatever, right, okay, how

0:08:37 Lindsey: That's right. That's right, yeah. And so yeah, so the salary for whoever occupies this position is paid through that endowment instead of through the school, it's very prestigious, um, it's the kind of position, like having an endowed chairship really helps schools to attract like particularly distinguished candidates that they might not, all, they might not otherwise have a shot at getting, right?

0:08:55 Thomas: Common is this like in other fields, I mean not just journalism, is this the kind of thing where it's like, oh, there's the, this thing, whenever you hear someone is a person's name, professor of something at a school, I take it that means it's probably this kind of things, and endowed position?

0:08:56 Lindsey: Yes.

0:09:10 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, it's not, it's, endowed chair positions are not specific to journalism, they happen in all kinds of places, right, um, you psychology department at Roanoke College would love one, if anybody's interested in it, would

0:09:10 Thomas: Okay.

0:09:20 Thomas: The serious inquiries only, and I don't know if we have the budget, Patreon goal, if I get to 10,000 patrons, yeah, I think we're like 3% there. So, you know, get work, get working on it. But I think if we get to 10,000 patrons, we create an endowed professorship. But you're already tenured, so what does that matter? Never mind. Well, whatever, you will work it out. We got the details, right?

0:09:43 Lindsey: Have to be for somebody else Yeah, um, but yeah, so, so, uh, so Chapel Hill School of Journalism has historically hired night chairs who are these influential professional journalists and rather than academics, we can come back to that later. And they can bring their professional experiences into the classroom, which is super important to have people in the classroom that have been journalists and can bring that, that experience to students, right, um, and so, as you said, the two people who failed this position previously were both hired in as full professors with tenure, which is a big damn deal, like full professor, like if you decide to be a professor, you only get two promotions in your career, and one is to associate, which is what I have, and then the second one's to full. And so to be hired in is a full professor with tenure

0:09:56 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:10:26 Thomas: What if you don't get the full one? Will you be fired? OK, so that's just the first step is you're fired if you get second place. Gosh, what a hardcore system.

0:10:29 Lindsey: No, that's right. Right. I know, I know. Yeah, no, full you can keep going up for. So if you don't get it the first time, you can Keep doing it.

0:10:41 Thomas: OK. So that's more like the parole, okay, yeah.

0:10:44 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, so so this is the history of the position, right, she was again offered this position, approved for the position by all these different steps in the college that, again, we're going to talk about excruciating detail, but then, in what the New York Times called a quote unusual step, which I think is the understatement of the, the century, UNC's board of trustees did not approve the school and the university's recommendations that she be hired with tenure. And instead of a full professorship, she's being offered a five year fixed term position, right? So not a full professorship. Usually, like I did a little bit of reading about this, and this isn't always the case, but usually when somebody is offered a fixed term position it's because it's a temporary position, right? So this is a very different kind of position than the position that's advertised, ties essentially, so that's, that's the background here, that's

0:10:54 Thomas: Yeah yeah which And already it's weird, and I think it seems to be some sort of bureaucratic quirk or whatever, that the board of trustees even has this power, because, like you said, this is already paid for by the foundation that created this position, and everybody involved, the school, the foundation, and by the way, I was reading about this, and, you know, the foundation, I think, doesn't have any power over the appointment, to try to like maintain, you know, yeah, like that, that kind of, um, I don't know what the word is, but they don't, they don't want to have a hand in it, they, they fund the position, and they, you support the university to make that decision, I think, uh, and empower them to make the decision, but the Knight Foundation approves of it, you know, like informally, uh, the school, like we already said, I mean, the the people who are responsible for filling this position chose her.

And then for some reason, a board of white dudes gets to say, not so fast. You don't get we're changing the nature of the position that is already guaranteed by this Knight Foundation. I don't understand how this is even possible.

0:12:04 Lindsey: Right, exactly yeah yeah yeah, yeah, it's, so yeah, we'll, we'll talk about it, it's, yeah, it's shocking, as I said, um, this is, yeah, this, right, so you, you talked about uh, Nicole Hannah-Jones's sort of pedigree here, right? I mean, she's a recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, she's, um, you know, had over 20 years of experience in journalism, she's gotten, she's been the recipient of these, of multiple competitive fellowships including the MacArthur, yeah.

0:13:05 Thomas: It's Yeah. MacArthur, Genius, Grant.

0:13:07 Lindsey: Yeah exactly right, so by all appearances she is an incredibly worthy candidate for this endowed chair position, she's had an influential and impressive career, yeah.

0:13:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Let me take a second. Apologies, let me, because somebody was arguing with me about this on Twitter and, like, gosh, she doesn't even have a graduate degree. I was like, well, she has a master's

0:13:18 Lindsey: Go ahead oh that person doesn't know what they're talking about out yeah, I looked

0:13:24 Thomas: Yeah no she has the master's master's a and b, it's a journalism, like, you're trying, what do you need to be a PhD in journal, would that Be more valuable to be PhD journalism, which I guess exists, but like Yeah.

0:13:32 Lindsey: Into this nope yeah It Does, right?

0:13:41 Thomas: But like, or would you rather Heather Gitt, you person who was responsible for the 1619 Project, a groundbreaking, amazing thing that everyone loved, except for conservatives, obviously, who won a Pulitzer for it and all these other credentials, 20 years of investigative journalism experience. Like, what's more valuable to a professorship in this position?

0:14:03 Lindsey: Yeah, and for this specific position, for the night chair, they have typically chosen professional journalists for it, right? So Yeah, right, and actually I looked at this claim because I saw this too, about like, well, she's only got a master's.

0:14:08 Thomas: Wow. What do you know? Yeah.

0:14:15 Lindsey: It'd be crazy for her, to for them to offer her tenure. Um, no, no, because as you mentioned, right, in psychology, that would be true, right? If you, a psychology professorship, You have to have a PhD. Sure, right? Academic disciplines, right, that tends to be true, right. But at UNC Chapel Hill, in their journalism department, and from what I've read, this is typical for journalism departments, they have two tracks that professors can follow. So there's a research track, and those faculty have more traditional academic backgrounds. So they have PhDs, and they do, they publish in like peer review journals and stuff, and then they have a professional track. And professional track faculty, as the name suggests, have backgrounds in professional journalism rather than backgrounds in academia, and they usually don't have PhDs.

0:14:22 Thomas: Yeah. Sure. Math. Yeah. Physics. Sure.

0:14:59 Thomas: Yeah. It's literally in the name, an investigative journalism position. That implies you're doing that stuff. Not like, oh, I've read a book about investigative journalism.

0:15:02 Lindsey: Yeah. Yes. Exactly. It's a completely different skill set, right? And by the way, like, you know, I am pulling this information that I'm talking about, about these tracks, like straight out of the faculty handbook. So this is right there in terms of these tracks. So yeah. So that person doesn't know what they're talking about, out just full stop, right? So again, by all appearances, from an outside perspective, she's an incredibly worthy candidate. But what we really want to know is, like, okay, is that what the faculty in the college thought when they underwent this tenure review? And so this is the part that's going to require excruciating detail into, like, the structure of universities and the tenure process, process.

0:15:10 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:44 Thomas: I love it. Buckle up, everybody.

0:15:44 Lindsey: Oh, boy. I hope you love it by the end of this. All right, so, we've alluded to this a little bit already, but the hiring process and the tenure process, um, work differently, and they require approval from, like, different bodies, bodies. So when you're talking about hiring, like, who to appoint for a position, the board of trustees and the president, etc, they're not involved in hiring decisions. So, it's, it's the faculty in the department, right? Or usually it's a, it's subset of them, like a hiring committee, that read applications, they conduct interviews, they get their short lists together, they do campus interviews with, with, like, their top three candidates or so, or whatever, and then on the basis of that process, they recommend to the dean of the school who to be hired, right? And then the final hiring power is with the dean.

So he has the final say in, like, whether somebody's hired or not. But generally, right, he's not going to go against the recommendation of the faculty in the school or the department, right, because they know best, like, who is qualified for that position, right, but he does have final say there. So I mean, that's the way it works at Roanoke, that's also the way that it works at UNC Chapel Hill and their School of Journalism. And so Hannah Jones could be, and was, offered a position at Chapel Hill without the approval of the board of trustees. They're not involved in that process. And,

0:16:11 Thomas: Because

0:17:05 Lindsey: As you mentioned, it's good that the process works like this because it helps to preserve academic freedom. You don't want the composition of your faculty to be shaped by moneyed interest, essentially, right, which is what the board of trustees is involved in, and we're going to come back to that in a little bit. All right, so that's hiring. When it comes to tenure decisions, the process is much more involved and requires many more levels of vetting and approval, and the details of this process vary from school to school, but I, again, I looked at the faculty handbook for UNC Chapel Hill to make sure that I was getting these details right, okay? So here we go. So, like, I teach at a small liberal arts college, right? And tenure, tenure is not a cakewalk, right? Anywhere. But, you know, yeah, yes.

0:17:50 Thomas: I mean, for people like me, it's a big, it does it essentially mean you're there for as long as you want to be? I mean, it's very hard to fire you, is that why it's something that you know, okay, like for example, I am pretty sure Alan Dershowitz still has a tenured position at Harvard Law, even now, like, after all that's happened, like, it's that, it's that hard to lose tenure, apparently, you can be Alan Dershowitz

0:18:01 Lindsey: Like unless I stop doing my job or commit some sort of misconduct, right? Then like, yes, I have job security.

0:18:13 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah it is, right. And all of that is in the name of academic freedom, right, I mean, you know these people that are complaining about cancel culture claim that this is going away at colleges and universities. I strongly disagree with that. But yeah, the whole idea behind tenure is that it gives you the freedom to explore things that, you know, people like the Board of Trustees may disagree with, but, you know, that's what you're doing in an academic setting. You're exploring ideas, so at right?

A college like mine, at a small liberal arts college, right, Tenure is still not easy to get, but I only have a few layers of review compared to someone who works at a university, let alone a university that's within a network of universities like UNC Chapel Hill. And so the difference here between colleges and universities, it's primarily structural. So if you're working at a college like mine, we have separate academic departments within the college, but administratively, we essentially are just one body. We have a dean over the college. He's also the vice president of academic affairs over the college. We have a president, we have a board of trustees who are entrusted with overseeing the financial health of the institution.

So they manage the college's endowment and they have final approval over like spending decisions and things, right? If you're talking about a university, right, a university houses a number of schools and colleges within it. So UNC Chapel Hill has 14 different schools and collages, including the College of Arts and Sciences, School of

0:18:21 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Hmm.

0:19:46 Lindsey: Law, and the Husband School of Journalism, And so each of these schools and colleges has an administrative structure that looks similar to my college. So they have like an academic dean that's over that school. But in addition, they have another level of administration above that, which is over UNC Chapel Hill, in its entirety, right, so over all the schools. And so that includes a chancellor, which has kind of like a president, right a vice chancellor and provost, so that that functions like our dean at our college, but for all the schools in the university, and it has a board of trustees, right? And additionally, because UNC Chapel Hill is one university within a system of universities, all of UNC, they have yet another level of administration above that. So they have a president over all of USC and a board of governors,

0:19:46 Thomas: This

0:20:32 Lindsey: Which is like a board of trustees but over the entire network of UNC universities. You sleeping yet? It. I

0:20:37 Thomas: Is, I blacked, yeah, no, this is, like, trying to keep track of the bearded old white men in Game of Thrones in those early seasons and

0:20:43 Lindsey: Know. I swear to God, there's a point. So the reason that I'm going through all the structural detail is this. Whereas my application for tenure and promotion was vetted by the faculty in my department, and then a committee of faculty from across my college, and also the dean of my college, then finally it went for approval by the president and board of trustees of my college. The journalism faculty at UNC Chapel Hill who are applying for tenure on promotion have to be approved at all of those other administrative levels as well. So they have to be approved.

0:20:47 Thomas: This is even for a thingy that's funded by an outside thingy.

0:21:19 Lindsey: That is correct. They still have to meet the standards for tenure and promotion. Yeah. So, yeah. So Nicole Hannah-Jones, for instance, she had to be proved to get tenure by the bodies and administrators within the School of Journalism, by those who represent UNC Chapel Hill, and ultimately all of Those Who Oversee, or Those Who Oversee All of UNC. NC,

0:21:19 Thomas: Okay.

0:21:41 Thomas: So lots of people. A

0:21:43 Lindsey: So a lot of people.

0:21:45 Thomas: Who make these decisions had to make this decision.

0:21:48 Lindsey: Right, exactly, right? And so here's what this process would have looked like for her. So since she's coming in and applying not only for the job, but also for tenure, who are applying for tenure have to submit a dossier that details the evidence that they have met the school standards for excellence in teaching, for professional life. So, like in my case, that means research, but in her case, that would mean her body of journalistic work and evidence that she's met the standards for service, right? So those tend to be our three domains of like professional activities. And putting this dossier together is a hugely laborious process, right, I spent months doing mine, you've got to do narratives and pull together all this evidence, right. It's a huge, it's a body of documents and evidence that are going to be reviewed by all these bodies, so right, she would have done that, and then here are the steps of review that she would've met along the way before she got to the the Board of Trustees.

0:22:39 Lindsey: So her dossier would have been reviewed by a committee of nine tenured School of Journalism faculty members. It would have ben reviewed by the Dean of the School of Journalism. It wouldn't have been viewed by four external reviewers, right? And this is an interesting step that I don't have to deal with at a small liberal arts college. So these four external reviewers are individuals who are in the same field. So, these are journalism faculty, faculty, tenured journalism faculty, but they're external to the institution. So they're not UNC faculty. They're tenured faculty from like other similar institutions, right?

0:23:13 Thomas: Okay, okay.

0:23:14 Lindsey: And one important thing here is that these external reviewers cannot be people that the candidate knows or has worked with in any way, like for complete objectivity, right. So can't be a former collaborator, can't have been a former mentor, nothing like that. right.So so far, we've got the journalism faculty committee. We've got the dean, we've got four external reviewers. Then it's also reviewed by a university-wide faculty committee, so this is UNC Chapel Hill faculty from across the schools and colleges. It's also interviewed by the vice chancellor and provost, right? And so all of these bodies and individuals reviewed her candidates or reviewed her materials, right, and they made recommendations that she should be granted tenure, right. And this process sort of works in like an ascending fashion. So the external reviewers make recommendations to the School of Journalism.

0:24:01 Lindsey: The School of Journals makes recommendations to its dean. Those recommendations go to the university faculty committee and the vice chancellor and provost. And then all those recommendations go the UNC Chapel Hill chancellor and board of trustees, and then finally to the UNC Board of Governors and the UNC president for final approval. Harrowing, yeah?

0:24:19 Thomas: Yeah, that's a lot of things.

0:24:22 Lindsey: Yeah. So, so according to the individuals who were part of this review process, they said that Nicole Hannah-Jones was recommended for tenure by all of those persons and committees and groups until it reached the board of trustees. And I, like, as a person who has been part of tenure reviews, right, the amount of time and careful consideration, note-taking, sort of, you know, looking at all the materials and seeing how they line up with the tenure standards, it's an immense amount of work to do these tenure reviews. And it's not something that anybody is taking lightly, right? So understanding, this is the part that leads me to say that this is really shocking as a decision. My understanding from going through this process at my college is that while it's true that the board of trustees does technically have the final approval of all tenure decisions, that final step is essentially ceremonial.

0:24:32 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Yeah

0:25:16 Lindsey: If someone is unanimously recommended for tenure, no.

0:25:16 Thomas: Because they aren't the people who should be making that decision.

0:25:22 Lindsey: They're probably the least well positioned to evaluate whether somebody should be approved for tenure. Whether they've met the qualifications. The people who should be doing that are all the people along the way that are giving recommendations to the board of trustees. And all the time, like in every case I've ever heard of, that is how it works, right? When I went through this process, the moment that I was waiting for was the receipt of my letters from the college-wide faculty personnel committee and the dean of the college indicating that they were recommending me for tenure. That's what I was waiting for. I wasn't biting my nails for the next month while I waited to see if the president and the board of trustees were going to approve that decision.

0:25:24 Thomas: Yeah well And talking about qualifications, qualifications, you know, let's take a look at the board of trustees. I mean, the, the chair is a lawyer, like he's not a PhD. He's not whatever. And I don't, I don't know what the function of the board trustees should be, like in a, in a non-racist conservatives taking over universities way. Like I, maybe a lawyer is appropriate for that, but like, if we're going, going to talk about who is qualified to make what decisions, don't think that a lawyer is the most qualified to making a decision about whether or not a journalism professor has enough qualifications to be tenured over and above, as you say, the 900 layers of very qualified people who already made that decision.

0:26:47 Lindsey: Exactly, right? And I mean, that is why they don't typically make those decisions. They look at the recommendations that they're given, and that's what determines whether or not they approve. It's a rubber stamp situation.

0:26:56 Thomas: Oh, wait, they're all lawyers. I'm going through the board.

0:27:00 Lindsey: Oh, that's interesting.

0:27:01 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, I didn't even realize this. The chair, attorney, vice chair, attorney, let's secretary. Actually, this is the one black woman, by the way, is a secretary, is also an attorney. Another member here, attorney, Jefferson Brown. These are the kind of names that are making this decision. Partner in a law firm. Here we go. G. Monroe Kobe, retired partner. OK, Heywood Cochran Jr. I mean, this isn't if I was doing a bit as to like, or like a kid's cartoon, as to what board of white people was denying the black woman tenure, these are the kind of names I would have made up.

0:27:36 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:27:36 Thomas: Heywood Cochran Jr., Charles G. Duckett, partner in a law firm. Kelly Matthews Hopkins, life development coach. Oh, okay. She's the one white woman, by the way. That's, I don't know. Okay, let's see. Now we're getting down to the non-attorneys. Attorneys, lifelong resident, Ali, Ali Ray McCullen, but we're back down to attorneys, Ralph Meekins, attorney, John, they may, they may also be attorneys, but like, I'm just scrolling through quickly, and then, by the way, whoever the whoever the student body president is gets automatically like put on that. Yeah, so it's a board of attorneys. Are they the most qualified to be making this decision? Over And if you want to talk about qualifications, oh, she doesn't have a PhD in journalism. Are A bunch of attorneys the most classified to be deciding and not just decide, vetoing the decision made by layers and layers of actual professors and PhDs and other people. And as you say, people from unrelated institutions that have no relationship with her, that that an outside, like, check on bias or whatever. Over and above. Veto all that. Some white male attorneys. Awesome. Yeah, it's definitely a great system.

0:28:28 Lindsey: Yeah, yes.

0:28:49 Lindsey: No, it's bizarre. And again, like, so to my knowledge, a candidate has never been recommended for tenure to the president and board of trustees at my school and been denied. And according to the journalism faculty at UNC Chapel Hill, it had never happened there either, to their knowledge. They referred to this decision as unprecedented, and I think that was very restrained of them.

It's, this is, this is, I cannot, I can't communicate how shocking this was to me, like, in seeing that, like, this was, this was the way in which she was denied tenure for this position. And one thing that's kind of interesting is that the only opinion piece that I found that really communicated just how shocking this aspect of the violation of process was, was written by a couple of people who were actually critics of Nicole hannah jones Did they, apparently, have been critical of the 1619 Project, but they, they published a an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and it was entitled "We Are Critics of Nicole hannah Jones Her Tenure Denial Is a Travesty." And I, this title is not hyperbolic at all, right?

And so, like, um, I've got a little bit of a quote from this that I want to read because I think that it's, it makes a point about academic freedom really well. Um, so they said, quote, "The final step in the process of making an appointment to the faculty of public and private universities alike routinely involves the approval of a board of trustees. At public universities, boards are often politically appointed, as is true at the University of North Carolina. At private universities, they are generally dominated by generous alumni and donors.

0:30:21 Lindsey: There was a time when such boards regularly exercised real power over the hiring and firing of members of the faculty. And the tenure of faculty members was dependent on staying in the good graces of the political factions and personal interests of powerful board members.

0:30:33 Thomas: Yeah. Great idea.

0:30:38 Lindsey: Yeah, the long fight for academic freedom necessitated insulating the faculty from the board. Board. Boards retain the power to approve the faculty hiring decisions, so they say faculty hiring, but, like, that's not true at UNC, it's not, through, it, I don't think that's true at most places. They just have the power, approve tenure, but continuing on, so boards retain the power of faculty hiring decision in the same way that the Queen of England retains the power to approve legislation passed by Parliament as a ceremonial formality only." I think that is absolutely right, and this is, like, this is a very disturbing decision, it when, when placed in that context.

0:30:56 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:15 Lindsey: And again, that is from people that don't like Nicole Hannah-Jones's journalism.

0:31:15 Thomas: Yeah. There's so much to talk about here because this is a very bad sign in a broader trend, because this is a state institution, you know, like, and everybody should definitely check out Ta-Nehisi Coates' segment. He was on an MSNBC show. He did like a five minute kind of essay that he, that he read about this. Check that out for sure, it's really good. But also, it emphasizes that this is, it's a pattern that we've seen with conservatives and conservative activism in this country. Invent a fake moral panic that has, like, you know, obviously a couple grains of truth to it, and then blow it out of proportion.

So cancel culture, academic free what, blah blah blah, um, pretend you're being silenced by that, create, create a whole media ecosystem that just reinforces, like, how you the white people are being silanced, the white people are being silent, whatever, and then use that to actually become the baddies in the, in the very thing. So now they are politicizing university decisions, but in their favor now. So like this is a trend that I don't think will stop here because the people who have the power, what demographics do you think are going to be these boards of trustees in different schools? We already saw

0:32:00 Lindsey: Yep yep no

0:32:34 Thomas: This one was 11 white lawyers or whatever, you know, like that, that's not radicals. That's not, that'S not even liberal. That's going to be a very conservative crowd. Uh, people who have money and connections who are getting these positions. Um, and they're going to use that power to now censor stuff. Like, and, and what Ta-Nehisi Coates says in his thing is look how many actual, like the difference is cancel culture as perceived, you Know, on our stupid media, like, uh, like mobs of anonymous people on Twitter or whatever versus actual the government doing something like, which is a big deal. And he goes through how Trump had the stupid project to counter 1619. It's not just that they like states banned discussion of the 1619 project or using the 16 19 project in schools or anything.

0:32:26 Lindsey: Right yeah

0:33:26 Thomas: Like they, they do the thing that they accuse us of doing, but for real. And with the power of the government behind them, it, it

0:33:34 Lindsey: It seems like kind of a theme on the show at this point, like, it's, it's, uh, yeah, it's astounding, it's genuinely astounding. Fact, it's one of the, a I mean, this, there's a, there's probably a lot more appropriate words to describe this case other than annoying, but one thing that I did find annoying about this is that, like, okay, so, like, I, you know, I've spent all this time saying, like, cancel culture is blown out of proportion, and then they have to go do this.

0:33:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:57 Lindsey: It's like it's just like an unambiguous yeah it is, it's

0:33:59 Thomas: Real cancel culture. It's God, it's so frustrating. I mean, there are a million examples like, Oh, a men trans will pretend to be trans to go into bathrooms. And then it's like, here's our solution. Um, We're going to inspect the genitals of kids in schools to make sure that they course. But you're like, what? OK, so you invented a fake thing and now you're predators, basically, like you're in order to solve the fake problem. You're goingto be inspecting child's genitals in schools. To make surethat they correspond to their pronouns or whatever. Like, it's it's such a pattern that it gets infuriating to witness over and over and over again.

0:34:18 Lindsey: Reasonable I'm furious, can you tell? No So one, one thing that, um, I was curious if you found anything beyond what I found, because what I kept seeing in these, um, these conservative pieces that were talking about the fact that she has questionable credentials, and saying that, you know, her journalism is sloppy, she, they contain factual errors, and that one person said that her work was historically reckless. And so, with all these claims, I was expecting to find, like, more examples, more evidence.

0:34:38 Thomas: Yeah, yeah Well, yeah yeah something pretty egregious, you're expecting, uh, some, some real misconduct. Some uh, sweet, simple Lindsey.

0:35:12 Lindsey: I was. Yeah. But in, yeah, boy, boy. I'm losing my naivete really quickly and doing, yeah. But the only thing, like, that I saw cited over and over and over again was this one sentence from the 1619 Project where she's talking about the role of slavery in the decision to declare

0:35:20 Thomas: Yeah yep yep I was going to talk about this very thing

0:35:36 Lindsey: It, but yeah, yeah, go, go for it yeah

0:35:36 Thomas: No and this is a pattern that, um, I've seen a lot of times, uh, a very sinister versions of it in the troll, you know, shit lord, right wing Twitter community. They do this thing where they create, create a narrative about you, and then they all adopt that and reinforce it with each other over and over and over again, but until it's just cited as fact, you know like, for example, they will just say over andover like, no, hopefully nobody cares about me anymore, uh, it's been long enough, but, the for example, as an example of this, the sargon related crowd will just say I'm a white supremacist because they created this version of events where I said that, you know, I said a quote that was like, in the heat of the moment, I didn't word it very well, you know.

I was like, well, the unrestrained kind of system, without any intervention, and, know, like, social movements and all that, white people were dominating over everybody else in this country, which is obviously true, um, and they took it to mean that I thought, like, without some intervention, that means white people are superior, and that's why. They don't, it was not at all what I meant, is that they controlled

0:36:00 Lindsey: Jesus yeah that's

0:36:45 Thomas: The money and the power and the land and whatever, going back and very much related to the 1619 Project, but anyway, so they created this a version of events where I'm a white supremacist for saying that, and then they just will say it over and over and and they, their people still to this day will, we'll just go on a random video or tweet or whatever. Oh, Thomas. And they do this routine like where they're, Thomas Smith, isn't that the white supremacy? You know, like they do this thing. It's incredible.

0:37:11 Lindsey: Annoying.

0:37:11 Thomas: It's the same thing with this, where they just have all decided that she did like a fraud thing. Like she just made up a history and totally whatever. And it goes down in that in that ecosystem as that. And then they all reinforce it. Oh, the journalist who just made a fact. Oh, the liar who, Bob, and you look at the actual letter, which I did in preparation for this, that like this is the as close as you can get to a real academic response to the 1619 Project. And even if you take everything in that to be true, which I think, I think it's a little misleading, but but even if you took that all for granted, at worst what she did is over represent a little bit the role of slavery in the founding of the United States and maybe Yeah.

0:37:22 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:38:01 Lindsey: Best case scenario for

0:38:03 Thomas: And may and like this, this is like the worst case for, uh, Nicole hannah jones like overstayed the role slavery in the founding, um, which by the way, uh, historically the role of slavery the founding is very underreported and undertaught, you, that yes, yes, to counteract that glorified that version of events where a bunch of saintly people inspired by God wrote a perfect document saying everybody's equal, meanwhile almost all of them owned human beings, uh, so

0:38:03 Lindsey: Them that is yeah the whole point of the 1619 Project Mm-hmm. Yes. I

0:38:34 Thomas: Yeah, I think we could use a little corrective to that, and then the other thing is major complaint was like, well, they were pretty shitty toward Abraham Lincoln, you know, because they've quoted the some parts which actually, like, I kind of agree with, because I think, you know, there's a side note, like, I, I do think there are a lot of bad Abraham Lincoln quotes, but then, like, he changed his mind later on and you can also find good reasons for why he did stuff, but like it's a mixed bag, like he obviously, he probably was still racist in a bunch of ways because it was 18 fucking whatever, but like, yeah, those are the two major charges, like, meanwhile, meanwhile, everything else in the project is amazing and valid and no complaints, but like those two things, and they, New York Times responded and and even Nicole Hannah-Jones said, yeah, now that I look at it, I realize the wording I used made it seem like slavery was the only reason for the founding of our nation, for independence from the, Britain, when, you know, it wasn't the only factor. And like, I should have maybe used different wording. Okay, cool.

0:39:38 Lindsey: Mean she did say primary, I wouldn't have read that as only.

0:39:39 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Like, all right. She should have used different wordings. In a sentence, but because of this, it is a broader culture war, obviously, over the soul of the nation, because the, the conservative half of this nation wants everything to be great, and nobody was bad, and all the white people were heroes in this story, and then a bunch of people are finally trying to like really fight back against that narrative, and the whole point of the project is recasting it as 1619, like literally looking at the history of when the, the first slaves were brought to this country, to this land, I guess, and it's a super valuable project. You know, one thing I want to bring up was that, what's interesting is, so I don't know, know if I read the 1619 Project, but I listened to the podcast because I am a podcasty listening person. And I didn't even remember this part.

0:39:44 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah.

0:40:31 Thomas: Like it was insignificant in terms of the entire project, which is another reason this is so infuriating. I, what I, okay. So it's been two years and you know how humans are, especially me. Like you don't remember everything that you you learned two years ago. And my big, usually people have a few takeaways, you know, and my big takeaway was I was very, very affected by the two episodes about black farmers trying to make their way in these historically incredible and still very racist areas. And it was staggering, the injustice, the injustice. It was, it was all about, and again, it's been two years, but it was all about like, to be a farmer, you have to be taking out loans all the time. Like you need need access to loans because, you know, just the way the business works, like you have to buy all the crap early on to plant the crap.

0:41:25 Thomas: And I'm not a farmer, I don't know, to plant this stuff. And then you don't often have, you don't have the money until you harvest everything, you sell it. There's obviously all kinds of ways that you're subject to bad yields or other whatever. And so, so credit is like a vital thing that you need to be a successful farmer no matter what. And there's episodes interviewed and really featured the life stories of these, this black farmer, like this family came from generations of black farmers trying to make it work and showed how they were systematically screwed over by the banks.

0:42:02 Lindsey: Yep.

0:42:02 Thomas: Not giving them the same credit that their white neighbors, like literally neighbors who were in the same situation, uh, less of a history, by the way, like this was a farming family, like it was in the generations of farmers not being able to get the credit they needed to plant as much as they could, meanwhile he was a better farmer, he was like, I have better yields, uh, per, you know, whatever, acre, acre, or whatever the measurement would be, like he's better at it, but eventually I think he couldn't do it anymore, like you had to give up the family farm was my memory, um, and that really stuck with me, it was like it was incredible journalism, like I was, I was blown away by how depressing this was, and this is now, this is not in 1619 or some crap, like this was now, and so there's so much to the 1619 Project, um, and it's that much more infuriating and minimizing and just intellectually, intellectually, uncurious, you know, by the right to just say, well, she said that slavery was the main thing for, shut up, read a fucking book, read it, you don't like it. Yeah.

0:43:07 Lindsey: Yeah, it felt, it felt to me like the objection to this particular quote felt a lot to me, like what, what conservatives have been doing on a lot of issues relating to race in particular, right? Several of the of the responses that I read to this sounded very much like hashtag not all colonists. Like she had said that this was the primary reason that all colonist did this. And it's so, I mean, it's just it's hyper focused on individual motives, it's hyper focused, and and by the way, like I think all that is, I think that they, they are, they are being way too charitable on that, but the central thing here is about institutional and systemic racism, it's it's about, it's the fact that that's baked into the origins of our, of our country, and so even if I were to accept this criticism as valid, it wouldn't change anything, I

0:43:51 Thomas: Every book I've ever read about any history or anything, there's always, you can find any number of other historians, they're like, that part's not right. There is no such thing as a work of history that every single historian is like, yep, no, we agree with that, like, there's always going to be quibbles with stuff like that, but it seems to me that they are turning what the quibble that will always exist in scholarship like this into, she's a liar, yeah.

0:44:19 Lindsey: Into a claim that she made a factual error, yeah, or is lying. Right Right. And yeah, no, it is clear to me that that's not what happened. Like in that note that the Times published when they changed that sentence from the primary reason of colonists to the primary reason of some colonists, because, hashtag not all colonists.

They published a note to explain that update and they defended the general point that she's making here, because according to them, it's like, yeah, OK, so there's some historians that dispute this interpretation, there's a lot of historians that support it, and they said, actually this is a good quote from that note, they said, um, so this interpretation of the historical record is disputed by some historians, but quote, "can be found in much of the scholarship into the origins and character of the revolution that has marked the past 40 years or so of early American, early American historiography, in part because historians of the past few decades have increasingly scrutinized the role of slavery and agency" of enslaved people in the driving events of the revolutionary period, right, so this is a, this is an area that's being, I think, justly re-examined because of the whitewashing that you talked about, um, and like, yeah, as you say, most things are going to to have, you know, some dispute over them, I think some are more settled

0:44:20 Thomas: Yeah. Wow yeah

0:45:30 Lindsey: Than others yeah it is yeah

0:45:29 Thomas: It's literally their job like to to quibble like, hey, don't you think, especially in history, that's a field that like, I, like you know, again, I'm not an expert, you're not a historian, but like every single time I read any historical anything, like even the best stuff, there's all kinds of disagreement about interpretation. History is tough. It's not a science. You find different points of view, you find different archival documents, letters, whatever, and they give you slightly different, you can craft narratives around it and there's no one objective truth. No matter what your work of history is, apart from major, as you say, major uncontroversial little details

0:45:34 Lindsey: I do, yeah no I'm not, yeah It Is Yeah.

0:46:13 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:46:13 Thomas: Kind of thing, Like this person was there this day. But like, yeah, it's there. There are going to be quibbles. And I think that the culture, this I always struggle to use the right word for it because I always want to say like, well, it'S conservatives. But like it's not conservatives. You know, it's it's it's like the anti-woke crowd, I guess, which which comprises or is comprised of. Depending on which it contains, obviously, all kinds of people on the right, but also people on this IDW, you know, kind of pseudo centrist left, whatever you want to call it. So anyway, the anti-woke crowd, from what I see, a lot of times there is always an effort to find something to quickly disqualify somebody for convenience sake. And especially when they are woman, especially when they are not white. It seems to be even that was the whole problem in the Democratic primary, even among Democrats. That was a problem.

Like one one misstep or one thing or one criticism of Kamala Harris, it seems to me, had a lot more weight than similar criticisms you could make about male candidates. Like it just we disqualify people as fast as possible when they're not white men. With like and it's not just Just non-white, non-men, by the way, too. It's any time there's an inconvenient kind of

0:46:45 Lindsey: That's

0:47:33 Thomas: Truth that they want to disqualify. They do the same thing with the CDC. Well, you know, they said don't wear masks initially. So I never have to read anything they say ever again. And I never half to listen to them because I found the one thing that disqualifies them.

0:47:41 Lindsey: Right. Right. And And I think I think that's a good comparison because I mean we we talked about why that's that was a that's stupid thing to stick on, right? We talked about like the process by which they they change those guidelines, right? And I I think, you know, you said history isn't a science, and that's true, but it's still like an evidence-based discipline and there are better and worse supported positions, right?

0:47:54 Thomas: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely.

0:48:07 Lindsey: And I think that what's being uncovered, um, over the past few few decades is that there are some some mainstream positions that aren't as well supported as they seem to be, and I think the 1619 Project is exposing that, and I think that's great.

0:48:21 Thomas: God. So frustrating. We didn't really talk about it, but, you know, I think there are a lot of people I mentioned in the beginning, there are A lot of people trying to talk about, well, there is a huge problem with tenure and, you Know, academia, like there aren't those because there is, isn't there a whole side issue of there? It? Like it's all adjuncts or whatever. Like it's All, there's too many of that.

0:48:22 Lindsey: Oh. Yeah. That is A huge issue Mm-hmm.

0:48:42 Thomas: Yeah. And, and I'm sure you could tell us all about that on another day.

0:48:42 Lindsey: That is, yeah, it's a totally separate podcast.

0:48:48 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. That's all I wanted to say is faith response tries to use those things to distract us from the reality of what happened. Oh, she's still got a five-year position. I mean, what, are you crying about a person who's in a privileged... No. Saw what happened, a position that is a tenured position, which was recommended, as you said, by all these layers of people, it was recommended that she get tenure was denied by a board of white male lawyers. That's not, there's no way to spin that as well. Uh, some professor, but shut up. Like that's the, that's The Bare Bones Fact. Black woman who has been exactly.

0:48:55 Lindsey: Yes.

0:49:24 Lindsey: Vocal about race. Yeah.

0:49:26 Thomas: Uh, cast in a certain way by by conservatives, as a villain, has been politically, for political reasons, deprived of a position that anyone else would have just got. Like we never would have thought twice about it.

0:49:37 Lindsey: And we're, and we're not just asserting that because of the outcome, right? Did you, did you happen to read any of those reports from NC Policy Watch? They have been doing like special reports when they, and they have talked to some of the board of trustees members and they, their reporting indicates that like, Like, yes, these discussions were explicitly political and they didn't want to hire her because they've been receiving pressure from, you know, these powerful conservative groups that don't like her, but they don't have the power to hire or fire. Right. So what they can do is deny tenure. But there were people that were in the room, were part of those conversations about granting her tenure, and they are saying that like, "No, this is, this is absolutely a political decision." Don't it's horrifying, I

0:49:51 Thomas: Okay. Right.

0:50:24 Thomas: Yeah. It won't be the last of this. There will be more of this, I think, especially in certain states, and maybe a state by state thing, because I think when, I don't know how explicitly you said this or whatever, but when, when I was trying to research about this board, I mean, it does seem like a lot of this is like state Senate approved kind of thing, like the way you get onto these boards of trustees, you know. So it's, it is, again, we're out of time and I am repeating myself, but it's just so frustrating because the people who have the knowledge, who have the actual credentials to be making these decisions, made the decision, and they wanted her because obviously you would want somebody like that for this position. Somebody with her achievements would be obviously a great person for this position. Like it's inarguable. Oh, she doesn't have a master's in journal. Shut up. Like it is

0:50:28 Lindsey: It's Bullshit, yeah.

0:51:17 Thomas: So stupid. But the other track, you know, speaking of tracks, the other track to becoming a decision maker who gets veto power over a bunch of experts is to be connected to the people already in power in these, these conservative states, uh, and, and to be a white lawyer at some sort of law firm in the state, you know, like they get a shortcut to veto power there. And that, you know, that, it seems emblematic of, of a lot of the political struggle throughout history. Um, you Know, you gotta be, you got to be twice as good as they say. And then even then, some, some panel of white dudes can just deny your tenure. It's, it's, it's so frustrating, huh?

0:51:45 Lindsey: It Is, oh, and just, it's just, I know we're out of time, but there was one funny thing. So, um, one thing that this NC Policy Watch website has been reporting on is they've been noting like this these conservative columns that have been coming out of, of this, uh, James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, which, I was not familiar with this group, but it is apparently a conservative group, right? And they have been publishing these columns about how, like, the Board of Trustees needs to prevent, uh, Nicole hannah jones's hiring, and that, that if they can't do that, that they should amend the system policies so that the Board of Trustees does have hiring and firing power.

0:52:35 Thomas: My god, yeah.

0:52:36 Lindsey: And it's, I mean, in light of that opinion piece that I read earlier from the critics of Nicole Hannah-Jones, who was saying like, yeah, that's exactly what we don't want. You guys are the ones that are always talking about academic freedom. You're always talking About, you know, the marketplace of ideas and all this stuff. And now you want to have an authoritarian system like this? Really?

0:52:44 Thomas: Ridiculous.

0:52:56 Thomas: Yep.

0:52:57 Lindsey: It's completely hypocritical. Think it makes their motives here very, very clear. This has nothing to do with academic freedom.

0:53:05 Thomas: This is not good. This is very bad. Um, thanks for giving us the breakdown as always, providing some much needed perspective from an actual tenured professor. So, uh, really appreciate that, appreciate that as always. Hey, it's almost the end of the month, month. So probably your last chance, patrons, to get, or non-patrons to get on patreon.com/seriouspod and go find that, uh, it's going to be May Q and A thread that I started the beginning of month, put some questions on there. We'll be recording our monthly Q and A, uh, very soon, a couple of days here. So, um, make sure to get onto that. I think it's a great system. I can't wait to, uh. To answer those questions and to hear Lindsay probably answer answer more questions.

0:53:46 Lindsey: It is a wonderful system. It's system I would not want to amend. It's a good one.

0:53:50 Thomas: Yeah, it's good. It's a good one. So jump on that. Thanks so much for listening. And also, by the way, I haven't said this in a while. Please share the show with somebody. If you found this compelling, if you found it valuable, please share it with somebody. These days, podcasting is obviously a very tough, competitive, crowded field. And that that's great. There's a lot of amazing podcasts to listen to. But it's also easy to get drowned out. So, you know, please sure this if you find it valuable because it's really helpful to the show. And I mostly want to get the word out about these very these issues that can make even Lindsay Osterman mad. So there you go. All right. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. We'll see you next time.

0:54:23 Lindsey: Even me.

0:54:36 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do, is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.